Disable Search Index for a specific Database

Disable Search Index for a specific Database

Disable Search Index for a specific Database is pretty simple so this is going to be a short post. This works on Microsoft Exchange 2010 SP3.
Run the following (if you want to Enable it instead, just change $false with $true):

Set-MailboxDatabase "DBNAME" -IndexEnabled $False

If you just want to check whether the Search Index is enabled or disabled for a certain database, just run:

Get-MailboxDatabase “DBNAME” | Select-Object IndexEnabled

Last command for this post covers the case when you want to list all of the databases in the environment and check if the Search Index is either enabled or disabled:

Get-MailboxDatabase | Select-Object Name, IndexEnabled

Note: Name will display the database name.

Important: If you try to activate the DB on another server, you will get an error! In order to successfully move it over to another server, use this command:

Move-ActiveMailboxDatabase DBNAME -ActivateOnServer SERVERNAME -SkipClientExperienceChecks

That’s it! People might ask why would you do that: that’s mainly because perhaps you have an inactive Database and in order not to use too much disk space you want to disable search index for a specific database. Next question would be: why do you have an inactive DB taking up your space? One of the many reasons that I can think of is when administrators want to keep mailboxes of people who have left the company concentrated on the same DB for a certain amount of time. That will also reduce the costs in case of a physical environment as the disk(s) reserved for this database don’t need to be superfast.

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